Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (34 page)

In the letter quoted previously, Bembo referred to ‘some solace to your anguish with my letter’. Lucrezia’s anguish, indeed her central preoccupation, was connected with the fate of Cesare. Since he had arrived in Spain towards the end of September 1504—ironically at the very same Valencian port, Villanueva del Grao, from which his great uncle Alfonso Borgia, the future Pope Calixtus, had set sail to found the Borgia fortunes in Italy – Cesare had been imprisoned in the fortress of Chinchilla, 700 feet up in the Valencian mountains. Isolated as he was, he still had friends and supporters: his Spanish cardinals, Lucrezia, and his brother-in-law, Jean d’Albret (moved by the grief of Cesare’s wife, Charlotte, his sister), continued to plead for his release with Ferdinand of Aragon, but the shadows of Juan Gandia and Alfonso Bisceglie hung over him and Queen Isabella was his implacable enemy. She, however, died at Medina del Campo on 26 November 1504, an event which raised the hopes of Cesare’s partisans. Cesare himself made a fruitless attempt to escape; early in 1505 unfounded rumours swept Italy that he was free and well received at the Spanish court by Ferdinand who hoped to make use of him in Italy for his own purposes. Isabella d’Este learned of them from Benedetto Capilupo who reported to her from Ferrara on 3 February.
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Lucrezia had soon discovered that these rumours were not true; she grieved for her brother and persisted in her attempts to gain his release. Among those she enlisted in her cause was Francesco Gonzaga, who was in Ferrara for Ercole’s funeral. A few days later, di Prosperi, on a courtesy visit to Lucrezia in the Castello, found her lying on her bed conversing with Stefano della Pigna, a distinguished Venetian envoy, celebrated astrologer and friend of Gonzaga.

It was a horrible summer at Ferrara; it was very hot, the plague had reappeared and there was widespread hunger. Early in May, Lucrezia had written an urgent official letter to Francesco Gonzaga asking him to speed through his territories the grain and food supplies which Alfonso had ordered from Piemonte. In July, di Prosperi reported that there was panic in the city because of the plague, and that all the citizens who could had left, only the poor and the merchants remaining: fifty to seventy corpses were being buried every day. In August he wrote that there had been 1,500 dead since the first outbreak of the plague and even more of hunger. The Este scattered to their country villas and palaces: Alfonso left for Belriguardo in mid June, returning briefly because of the grain crisis (and presumably to deal with Lucrezia’s household changes). Ippolito was nearby at Vigoenza. Lucrezia went to Modena with Alfonso’s uncle, Alberto d’Este, and her court. She was in frequent correspondence with Francesco Gonzaga, sometimes by private messages sent via Alberto Pio da Carpi, the humanist and bibliophile lord of Carpi, friend of Aldus, Bembo and Strozzi, with whom she had placed Cesare’s son Girolamo. On 19 July she wrote to thank him for some caps –
scotie —
he had sent her ‘by the present bearer’, ‘for which since they are most perfect, I thank you as much as I can and all the more because I recognize that in remembering me so often you give me more cause to be grateful to you every day. . .’

Plague had broken out in Modena too, but for Lucrezia help for Cesare was again in the forefront of her thoughts. After his failed escape he had been transferred from Chinchilla to the great keep, the Torre de Homenaje, of the castle of La Mota at Medina del Campo, in the heartland of Castile. It was considered impossible to escape from the castle with its central keep, four enceintes, single access gate and deep defence ditches, but from Cesare’s point of view it had advantages. He was no longer isolated. Medina del Campo was the great emporium of Castile: fairs held there brought bankers, merchants and traders from all over Europe; it was also one of the seats of the Spanish court.

Lucrezia renewed her efforts to secure his release and Alfonso was prepared to help her. Two messengers arrived at Modena from Cesare asking her to help by sending an ambassador to Rome. She had asked Niccolò da Correggio when he left there to take this message to Alfonso. She received a speedy response: on 1 July she wrote to thank Alfonso with all her heart for the letter he had written to Beltrando Costabili, Ferrarese envoy at Rome, ‘so that he can intercede for the liberation of the Most Illustrious Duke my brother. I have read the letter and it could not be better, according to my heart and desire. Then I sealed it with the impression of your seal which you sent me and forwarded it to Rome . . .’
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The letters she wrote to Alfonso were far more formal than those she addressed to Gonzaga. She wrote to him about business and administrative affairs, the appointment of a new
podestà
for Modena, whether or not she should condemn a man, local quarrels and the need for him to provide the nuns of the convent of Corpus Domini with food since the plague prevented them from begging. She reported to him about her fever and diarrhoea on 9 July, probably caused by the bad water and great heat, then thanked him for his concern and offer to send her a doctor, which she would not need because she was better. In another she retailed what she was doing to save ‘Your Lordship’s “Morro” [Moor]’, whom he had left with her and who she was having treated by her favourite doctor, Lodovico Bonaccioli. Bonaccioli suspected Alfonso’s ‘Moor’ had the plague: he had a high fever, a swollen left side and beneath his groin a huge swelling. Sadly the Moor later died. As a result, Lucrezia, being very pregnant, now moved from her present rooms to the former Rangoni house, but dared not leave the city for fear of causing panic. She received the envoy of the King of France and discussed with him the matter of Cento and La Pieve, still unresolved since the time of her dowry agreement, and now the subject of vituperative discussion between the Pope and Ippolito. Later the principal French commander, M. de Lapalisse,
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visited her, accompanied by a gentleman of the French court, bringing extremely kind letters from the King and Queen of France for Alfonso and herself. At times Lucrezia felt it necessary to soothe Alfonso, begging him not to impose inquisitions and punishments on the couriers if certain letters did not arrive as quickly as he would like—‘I would be so grateful’. The tone of the letters might not have been passionate but they were friendly and affectionate: ‘I pray God that he may keep you for many years in health and happiness: the comfort and encouragement you have given me with your good-hearted letters have given me incredible pleasure . . .’ she wrote from Modena on 26 July.

In mid August she again asked Gonzaga for his help for Cesare. ‘I have always recognized that Your Lordship through every twist of fortune has borne a singular love to the Duke my brother,’ she wrote with a startling disregard for the facts.

And being well disposed towards everything that might be to his ease and honour as if you were his flesh and blood brother. [Therefore] with every faith in you I am asking your present favour for his liberation for which at the moment I am negotiating in Rome to send the Cardinal Regino to His Catholic Majesty with the licence and favour of His Holiness Our Lord. The Most Reverend Cardinal, on being asked if he would willingly go, has graciously answered that he would be happy to do so: all that remains is the permission and favour of the Pope. Whence, knowing the love His Beatitude bears Your Lordship, I earnestly beseech you to write to His Beatitude, pressing him to give permission to the Cardinal, and to write with such efficacy to the Catholic King that the Duke be liberated because I know for a fact that what His Holiness wishes will be done.

Poor Lucrezia was indulging in fantasy: the last thing the Pope would want was il Valentino at liberty to stir up trouble again, as he undoubtedly would. With an even more astonishing lack of reality she suggested that Francesco should write to the one man living whom Cesare had perhaps injured the most, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, asking him to try to keep the Pope ‘to this effect’. She begged Francesco to write these letters and send them to her by her courier so that she could forward them to Rome; also he might think it possible to write to one of his friends there who might be able to influence the Pope: ‘the Illustrious Lord my brother and I will be beholden to you and remember this kindness . . .’
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At the same time she wrote to Ippolito asking him to write to the Pope recommending Cardinal Regino’s mission; Ippolito responded with a ‘wonderfully satisfactory’ letter which she sent on to Rome under her seal.
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Meanwhile, Lucrezia had sent her trusted and long-serving major-domo, Sancho, who had come with her from Rome, to Spain for news of Cesare. The difficulty of communication was such that she did not receive Sancho’s reports from Segovia of 5 September until 10 October and even then all he could tell her was that he had been kindly received by the Duke of Alba and intended to go and visit Cesare.
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Lucrezia had moved from Modena to Reggio with her court on 14 August and it was there on 19 September in the citadel at the eleventh hour that she gave birth to a son, Alexandro, named in honour of his papal grandfather. Couriers were straightway sent to inform not only Alfonso but Francesco Gonzaga. An hour after the birth she felt cold in her legs which were wrapped in hot cloths; fever then came over her which lasted for five hours. Poor little Alexandro was a sickly child and unwilling to take the breast, Lucrezia warned Alfonso, who rushed
‘per stafeta’
(by the posts or post horses) to see his wife and child before returning to Belriguardo.

From Venice, Pietro Bembo wrote a gracious letter of congratulations on Alexandro’s birth: ‘Especially precious and cheering was it for me since I cannot tell you how anxiously it was awaited in view of the cruel disappointment and vain hopes of last year.’ This was evidently a response to the public proclamation of the birth but apparently Lucrezia was still close enough in touch to write personally to Bembo about it. On 30 September he replied saying how glad he was to hear that she and the baby were in good health. It is clear from this letter that Lucrezia and Bembo had parted for good, since he refers nostalgically to ‘those days in my good Messer Ercole’s Ostellato which often still keeps house for that only part of me which can dwell there now . . .’
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Less than a month later, the baby’s condition had deteriorated to the point that Alfonso sent his finest doctor, Francesco Castello, to see him. On 13 October, Lucrezia wrote to Alfonso enclosing the doctor’s report on their child. Her words sounded ominous; the arrival of Castello had been a great comfort to her and everything would be done ‘for the conservation and health of our little son’. At the same time the pregnant Isabella was unwell at Mantua and asked for Beatrice de’Contrari and the
comatre
, who were at Reggio in attendance on Lucrezia and her child. Lucrezia, she told both Alfonso and Francesco, agreed to send Beatrice to Mantua accompanied by her nephew, Lorenzo Strozzi, but after consultation with Castello she felt she could not release the
comatre
: ‘our little son has been gravely ill in these past days,’ she wrote to Francesco, ‘and although, thank God, he has begun to take the breast he is in such a condition that he will not be able to do without the Comatre . . .’ Three days later Alexandro died having suffered several fits and convulsions. The loss of a second child by Alfonso within the space of three years caused Lucrezia profound grief, as she told Francesco, the more so in that this child had reached full term and been born alive, and that being male it would have been the Este heir. News of Alexandro’s death did not reach Bembo until the end of November when Tullio, Bembo’s manservant, brought him a letter from Lucrezia. As somewhat cold comfort he sent an astrological chart which he had had prepared for the baby in Venice ‘by a man skilled in this art as soon as I received notice of his birth, so that Your Ladyship may discover some consolation in reflecting that we are truly in great part ruled by the stars . . .’
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He did not write to her again for more than seven years.

For Lucrezia, too, the romance was in the past. Ten days after her baby’s death, as soon as she had received a letter from Alfonso saying how much he would like to see her at Belriguardo, she was making plans to meet Francesco en route at Borgoforte.
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According to Isabella’s biographer, Luzio, who was not exactly prejudiced in favour of either Francesco or Lucrezia, Francesco was ‘beside himself with joy at the news’, writing on 25 October in a letter which has since disappeared, ‘we would not wish to have acquired a great treasure . . .’ than the news he had just received of her projected arrival.
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Luzio dates Lucrezia’s stay with Francesco at Borgoforte as the beginning of a declared love affair between the two, facilitated once again by Ercole Strozzi, an old friend of Gonzaga, who had just happened to issue on 27 October 1505 a humorous invitation to an eight-day wildfowling contest based at his villa at Ostellato. Luzio seems to have believed that the affair was platonic, given the difficulties the two of them had in meeting, but it is hard to credit that two people with the sexual records of Francesco and Lucrezia would not have taken advantage of any opportunity of having a physical relationship when it was offered. Despite all the difficulties it was to be a mutual and long-lasting passion. After spending the night at Borgoforte, where he offered a dinner for Lucrezia and her party, Francesco insisted on escorting her to Mantua despite her ‘resistance’, as she disingenuously informed Alfonso in a letter written from Borgoforte: